The Third Policeman A Novel

Name: The Third Policeman A Novel
Rating: 3.8017241379310343 (58 reviews)
Author: Flann O'Brien
ISBN: 9781564782144

by Flann O'Brien

3.8

(58 ratings)

200 pages1999Dalkey Archive PressISBN 9781564782144

Fiction Classics Mystery Art

About this book

The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe, " he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him. The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.

Publication Details

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1999
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781564782144
Language: en

About Flann O'Brien

Brian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist and satirist, best known for his novels At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman written under the nom de plume Flann O'Brien. He also wrote the novel An Béal Bocht as well as many satirical columns in the Irish Times under the name Myles na gCopaleen. He was born in Strabane, County Tyrone. Most of O'Nolan's writings were occasional pieces published in periodicals, which explains why his work has only recently come to enjoy the considered attention of literary scholars. O'Nolan was also notorious for his prolific use and creation of pseudonyms for much of his writing, including short stories, essays, and letters to editors, which has rendered a complete cataloging of his writings an almost impossible task—he allegedly would write letters to the Editor of the Irish Times complaining about his own articles published in that newspaper, for example in his regular Cruiskeen Lawn column, which gave rise to rampant speculation as to whether the author of a published letter existed or not. Not surprisingly, little of O'Nolan's pseudonymous activity has been verified. A key feature of O'Nolan's personal situation was his status as an Irish government civil servant, who, as a result of his father's relatively early death, was obliged to support ten siblings, including an older brother who was an unsuccessful writer. Given the desperate poverty of Ireland in the 1930s to 1960s, a job as a civil servant was considered prestigious, being both secure and pensionable with a reliable cash income in a largely agrarian economy. The Irish civil service has been, since the Irish Civil War, fairly strictly apolitical: Civil Service Regulations and the service’s internal culture generally prohibit Civil Servants above the level of clerical officer from publicly expressing political views. As a practical matter, this meant that writing in newspapers on current events was, during O'Nolan's career, generally prohibited without departmental perm